Ten whole days without posting ... I hate when that happens. And I'm sorry! There are some things on my mind right now which make concentrating on fanfic difficult, but I'll of course continue writing and posting. If there are glaring errors somewhere, just let me know and I'll fix them.

Cheers, and stay safe!

Chapter 36

"And it just crawled all over him?" Isaac asked. He was lounging on Stiles' bed and contemplating colours for the first of many health cards Stiles had planned. At Stiles' nod, he made a surprised sound. "Huh, that's really weird. I mean, it can't be McCall's wolf, but if it's your magic, it really has a mind of its own." A grin slowly spread over his face. "Or maybe not."

"Dude, no. Definitely not." Stiles hastily turned around to hide his flaming face. "When can you be done with the card?"

Isaac mercifully decided to stop his teasing. "I'll use coloured pencils, so maybe an hour? Does it have to be ready tonight?"

"Not really, I just want a distraction," Stiles admitted. "I'm always nervous when Peter's alone with Derek and my dad."

"They're welcome to their war council," Isaac said with a snort and finally chose a pencil. "I'm only really interested in the results."

"Well, it's probably safe to say that you'll have a substantial college fund now." Stiles listlessly scrolled through the Argent Bestiarium. "You're gonna do art, right?"

The soft scratching of the pencil lead on paper was the only sound for a minute. Then, Isaac said, "I guess so. It's still so new ... that I'll be able to do anything at all, I mean. My dad told me I'd be working at the cemetery, period."

"Since he's a complete asshole, we won't ever speak of it again," Stiles replied. "I don't know what I'm gonna do."

"Is this about your talk with the new principal?" Isaac asked. "She doesn't want to hold you back, does she?"

"No, it's the opposite, actually." Stiles turned back around, linking his arms behind his head and following the stroke of Isaac's green pencil with his eyes. "I told her that I'll probably have a problem choosing which masters to do first."

"You still have time," Isaac said calmly. "You could write a list with the things you wanna do and then talk about it with everyone. Might be that one of them is more useful than the others when it's time to go to college, and the rest will just follow."

Stiles stared at him. "When did you get so wise?"

Isaac threw a balled up piece of paper at him. "Shut it. You're stressing yourself out over nothing. You have a year yet, and half a year of doing whatever you want before any of this becomes relevant."

"Thinking and stressing is what I do," Stiles muttered mulishly. "Sue me."

"Believe me, sometimes I wish I could." Isaac put the pencil down and picked up another. "I'll go with turquoise for this one, yeah? We better start mild after the thing with the red die."

"Sure," Stiles agreed, still a little huffy.

"Stiles." Isaac stopped his colouring and looked up. "Look, I know it's kind of shitty that they went to Peter's for their talk, but they'll tell you what they've come up with. Okay? They just didn't want to waste our time with boring nitpicking."

"I'm wasting my time right now with fretting," Stiles countered. "I can't concentrate, even though this Bestiary is literally the stuff of legends."

"Okay," Isaac said simply. He got up, shoved Stiles' chair, with Stiles on it, aside, and opened Skype on his laptop.

"What are you doing?" Stiles asked, perplexed.

"Giving you what you need." Isaac huffed when the call got accepted. Without even a hello he said, "I told you that he'd go insane, Peter."

Peter's slightly weirdly angled face lightened up with delight. "So you did."

"You can add the money to my account," Isaac said, slanting a little smirk at Stiles. "See you later."

"Wha-" Stiles looked from the retreating werewolf to Peter. "You bet on me?"

"I didn't," Derek said gruffly with endearing earnestness. "Your dad, however …"

"Traitor," John said mildly. "And it was only five dollars, kid. Thanks for financing next week's cheat lunch."

Peter's smile widened at Stiles' huff. "I did bet on your ability to remain uninvolved for one evening, Stiles. Your willpower is one of the things that attracted me to you, after all. But I suppose I've learned my lesson when it comes to pack dealings."

Stiles flushed. "Well, I'm sorry for worrying, you jerk."

"I do not begrudge Isaac his gas money," Peter said, still looking inordinately pleased. "We shall just leave Skype active then, yes?"

"You better," Stiles muttered, ignoring his father's smirk. "I'll even mute my connection. I just wanna listen."

Peter mouthed a cheeky, "Kinky" at Stiles before adjusting the angle of the laptop camera for a better view and then settling down again at the breakfast bar, where bottles of craft beer and several bowls of nibbles were waiting. He was disconcertingly attractive in his jeans and plum coloured henley, but adding to his physical prettiness was that aura of confidence and power that never failed to make Stiles sit up and take notice.

Also, Peter was finally looking much better. There was colour in his skin again and his movements were far smoother than even a week ago. Stiles privately gave him another two weeks to heal completely. Derek, by the looks of it, was already there and so handsome for it that it bordered on the ridiculous.

Isaac cleared his throat, interrupting Stiles' staring.

"Right, back to the Bestiary," Stiles sighed.

As promised, he tapped the mute button. It soothed him somewhat that Peter easily picked up the talk again with no apparent desire to leave things out, now that the rest of his small pack was listening in. In fact, not even Stiles' father questioned this decision, which could only mean that they'd discussed it - him - beforehand and had decided to let him in instead of trying to protect his delicate sensibilities if he persisted.

"You know, I told Peter that it was dumb to try and have this talk without you," Isaac said, his attention firmly on the little picture he was colouring. "I dunno if it was a test or something." He paused, his brow furrowing a little. "And if it was, whether you passed or failed."

"I choose pass, thanks," Stiles replied. He spied the picture of something that disconcertingly looked like a hippogriff, only with horns on its head and a barbed tail, and stopped his scrolling. "Holy mother of fuck, our territory needs wards, ASAP. We do not want mountain hippogriffs here, and no, not having any mountains in the area won't deter them. Such is globalisation, apparently."

"I honestly don't want to know," Isaac declared. He glared at Stiles. "Seriously. Keep that shit to yourself if it isn't actively a problem. I've got enough nightmares already."

Despite himself, Stiles laughed. Isaac's exasperated tone was just tickling his funny bone. "Fine. But we do need wards. I want to try out intent-based stuff, that'd keep away people and things that want to kill us outright."

"Those are the hardest kind of ward to set up," Isaac retorted. He dropped the green pencil and chose a blue one. Even from four feet away, the colours were vibrant against the dark grey paper Isaac had chosen. "Peter told me so."

"He's probably right, but just how annoying is it to add layers with every new threat that we discover?" Stiles argued. "I'd have to do that for each person, which includes magical beings who're sentient and sapient enough to use names if I don't want to be racist and ban all of them. Right now I'm still inclined to believe the good in people. Mostly."

"Hah, that's a good one."

Stiles frowned. "I actually mean that."

"Yeah, and that's what's so funny," Isaac said, not bothering to react at Stiles' dubious eyebrow twitch. "Seriously, forget it right now. The way I see it, most supernaturals are utter assholes and we should cherry pick the few good ones instead of giving out chances to dumb bastards willy-nilly."

"Okay, that'd make warding a lot easier for the moment, but intent-based wards would still be the best solution in the long-term," Stiles replied. "Not only would it save me from having to renew that shit every couple of months, they'd also be much stronger. And of course far more flexible."

"I'm all for it, but Peter said that we'd need a strong focal object to anchor the magic," Isaac said. At Stiles expectant silence, he sighed. "He talks a lot about magic, now that you're so interested in it. But some things just seem too hard, like finding such an object."

"Why? What would we need?" Stiles pressed. "Is it a diamond the size of his head? Because if it is, that might be difficult, but the Argents did drop several millions of dollars on us. Cost shouldn't be a problem."

"Funnily enough, a diamond is apparently too fragile," Isaac said, picking yet another pencil. "They burn like nobody's business, so they're out."

"Then what do we need to make it happen?" Stiles turned away from the laptop screen to give Isaac his full attention. "Moon stone? Fossilized opal? Bone of a wooly mammoth?"

Isaac snorted. "None of those. Apparently some sort of magical quartz would be the best of the best, but according to Peter it's super hard to come by. Whatever's made its way topside has been sold or traded centuries ago. One of the largest quartz pieces is protecting the archive in Rome, actually."

Stiles needed a moment to digest this. "Bro, you got all this just by osmosis? I'm so envious right now! You wanna trade homes for a while?"

"God, I want to," Isaac murmured. He looked up from his work. "Can we ask? If your dad agrees, Peter might allow it."

"Oh, you bet I will," Stiles said, grabbing his phone and shooting his father a message. "And done." He pointed a finger at Isaac. "This trickle-feeding me information needs to stop."

"Absolutely," Isaac agreed. "It's interesting enough, but I'm tired of playing messenger pigeon. Half the time I'm feeling like an idiot, talking about magic." He shrugged at Stiles' wounded protest. "We've known that it exists - and that it works for you - for maybe two months. That's too short for me not to feel silly talking about it as if it were real. Even if it actually is real."

Stiles slumped a little in his chair. "Fine, I get what you mean. Although it doesn't feel silly to me . More like, wow, finally there's something that feels right to me, and that I'm good at."

"You're good at school, what are you going on about?" Isaac asked, taken aback.

"I know, I know, but it isn't the same. It wasn't ... enough. Doing this stuff is just …" Stiles stopped, trying to order his jumbled thoughts. "It makes my mind stop, most nights. I can concentrate on this, and I can sleep when I'm done. I dunno if you can imagine how it feels if you can't stop thinking about fifty things at once. Like, ever. But with this, I can. I feel normal , even if this stuff is so far from normal that it isn't even funny."

In the ensuing silence they could both hear Stiles' dad asking about the probability of the Council ever coming to Beacon Hills.

"Only if the Argents very visibly overstep," was Peter's answer. "Or …"

"Or?" Derek asked, notably annoyed at Peter's dramatics.

Peter's posture never changed, didn't even tense, when he said, "Or if something, or someone, else else draws their eye to us. It might happen, if our bad luck holds."

Isaac's mouth dropped open, same as Stiles'. They stared at each other, then at the screen, and then back at each other.

"Dude," Stiles said. He whirled around, hit the mute button to activate the microphone and cried again, "Dude!"

At Peter's loft, two of the three men jumped to their feet, half empty bottles clattering to the floor and spilling their contents.

"Stiles!" the sheriff shouted. "Could you not?"

"Sorry, dad, but you heard Peter! They might come after him!" Stiles cried. "We haven't gotten through all this bullcrap just for them to snatch him off the street, or whatever they do with people who draw their eye!"

"Right now they're not inclined to invest their time in us," Peter said calmly. He tipped his bottle at the screen in a toast to Stiles and took a swig of his beer. "As I said, we'll await the Argents' declaration, take their money, and quietly go about our business. If all goes well, we won't ever attract their attention … or at least not until we're ready."

"You realize that you've just jinxed it, don't you?" Stiles' father asked, voice deadpan. "I'm sorry, Hale, but you've ruined the mood for tonight. I'll get back home and try to wrangle my son before he's fretting himself into a panic."

"Hey, I'm not panicking," Stiles pouted. "My concern is valid after everything that's happened."

"You're both morons," Derek said. He glowered at Peter. "What did you tell us that for if it's not relevant to us right now?"

"Because the possibility is still there," Peter returned evenly. "It'd be foolish not to say anything in our situation. You know the stories as well as I do - how the Council is our world's boogeyman just as much as it is our highest court of law. They must have stirred for the Grand Matriarch to offer such an enormous settlement; there's really no telling if that'll satisfy them."

"Wait, what?" Stiles demanded. "I thought they would be satisfied with the Argents' blood money!"

Peter smiled crookedly. "They should be, yes. However, certain members can be curious, and having the attention of one of the most powerful beings in the world on you is rarely a good thing. I'm not proposing constant vigilance, that's just a recipe for exhaustion and disaster, but it never hurts to be aware of our surroundings. That counts double for the humans in our pack."

"Thanks for the heads up," the sheriff sighed. "And the new nightmares I'm probably going to have."

"I can make you a dreamcatcher, daddio," Stiles said promptly. "Anyone else need one?"

It was horrifying and gratifying all at once when Peter, Derek, and Isaac all raised their hands.

Determined not to make them feel any worse about it than they probably already did, Stiles just hummed and made a note on his writing pad. Meanwhile, the sheriff took his leave of the Hales, and Derek eyed Peter strangely for a moment before abruptly turning and vanishing from the screen.

"Harsh," Stiles sighed, leaning his head in his hand and sharing a commiserating look with Peter. "Night, Creeper Wolf."

"Goodnight, Stiles," Peter returned and ended the call.

Disappointed that he had more or less caused the inglorious ending of tonight's talk, Stiles closed Skype and buried his head in his folded arms. "You think magic could help with a personality transplant?" he muttered. "I need to get rid of my obsessive clinginess."

Isaac didn't sound particularly bothered as he said, "It probably can. Peter would probably be furious if you did that, though. He rather likes how you fuss over him."

"You're just saying that to make me feel better," Stiles grumbled.

"Nah, I'm really not. Your obsessive clinginess made Derek trust you, so it can't be that unattractive to a werewolf."

Stiles snorted. "You're a werewolf. Is that attractive to you?"

"Not sure, but then I'm very new at this whole werewolf thing." Isaac lobbed another wad of crumpled paper at Stiles. "You wanna look? I think I'm done."

Eager to let himself be distracted, Stiles went over to the bed and flopped down next to Isaac. The picture the other boy had drawn was only the size of a trading card, but for their purposes it was definitely large enough.

"I like the colours," Stiles said after a moment of intense perusal. "And that it's not too complicated. I want simple pics for simple magics, so people can recognize our stuff quickly."

"It's not too boring?" Isaac said, biting his lower lip. "It lacks a little something, doesn't it?"

"Actually, no." Stiles pointed to the upper right corner of the little picture. "I'll paint my rune there. For the first couple of customers I can get away with doing it by hand, but if our shop takes off, we'll have to find a way to print it on, maybe with metallic colour or something."

"Gold for the runes would be pretty cool," Isaac admitted. He released a soft breath and relaxed. "They could always be gold, since the cards will already have different colours to set them apart."

"Sounds good, so that's settled." Stiles clapped Isaac's shoulder and left his arm around the teen. "Good work, man! Thanks!"

Pleased, Isaac put the drawing into a folder to keep it safe and showed Stiles a couple of sketches for future projects and made a couple more with Stiles' input.

Half an hour later, Stiles' father knocked on the open door to announce his return. "Hey kiddos, you alright?"

"We're just peachy, sir," Isaac said, beginning to pack up his things. "I gotta go now, Derek's picking me up." He faced Stiles, who found it hard to mask his disappointment. "I'll see you on Monday, and I'll have at least one new pic for you."

"Fine," Stiles sighed. "I just thought we could have a sleepover."

"I asked Peter to call him home," the sheriff confessed. "I wanted to talk to you for a moment, and I don't think it can wait."

"It's not a big deal," Isaac assured Stiles. He leaned in for a hug and a little cheek rub. "Have your talk and then we'll see about hanging out. Bye."

He left and Stiles' father sat down on the bed.

"It's not a punishment," the sheriff said, rubbing his hand over the back of Stiles' neck in a gesture that had calmed Stiles since he'd been a baby. "But there are a few things we need to settle."

"Why?" Stiles asked, worried. "What's wrong?"

His father's face was grave, but also tender. "I'm so sorry that your mother can't be here to share this moment. It'll mortify us both, of that I'm certain, and she'd have made it so much better."

"Oh god, dad, it's not the sex talk, is it?" Stiles groaned. "I already had the sex talk! Several times! We can just cross this off your list right now and forget about it. Yeah? Please?"

John's answering look was as dry as the Sahara desert. "It's not a sex talk, so calm down. It is, however, the squishy feelings talk, which, in my humble opinion, is infinitely worse."

"Why?" Stiles squawked. "I don't have squishy feelings, except for Lydia, and we both know that nothing's ever gonna happen there!"

"For someone so smart you can be incredibly oblivious," his father retorted. "Right now I'm not so much worried about you, in any case. I'm worried about Hale's attachment to you."

"What?" Stiles stared at the man. "I thought you knew what the thing with Derek was about."

The sheriff looked at Stiles like he was being wilfully ignorant. "I'm not talking about Derek, kid. I'm talking about Peter."

There were no words to correctly articulate his horror at the accusation. All Stiles had were croaked denials, and his father was clearly not buying them.

"I wasn't born yesterday," John said calmly. "I recognize attraction when I see it, and unfortunately yours doesn't seem to be as unrequited as I'd hoped."

"God, dad," Stiles pleaded. "Please stop. I'm begging you."

"I can't. The way you worried about Hale as soon as he mentioned the Council coming here was telling, and you better believe that I'm not the only one who noticed." The sheriff sighed even as he tightened his grip on Stiles' nape a little. "It's not that I don't think that you could like boys, Stiles. If you do, that's just fine. Heck, after crushing on Lydia for so long Hale wouldn't even be a step-down, looks-wise. But I'm worried about the age thing, and his shady character, and the fact that he's a werewolf with a very unfortunate past and an alarming number of mortal enemies."

"Dad …"

"No, let me get this out in the open before something happens we can't recover from." Stiles' father cleared his throat. "You know my reservations, but at least the age thing will fall by the wayside as soon as you turn eighteen. My other reservations won't, so I want you to think long and hard about what you're going to do with that man, Stiles."

"I'm not gonna do anything with him," Stiles forced out. "I know that I'm too young, and do you think I'm okay with maybe being attracted to a fucking murderer?"

"Well, there are some mitigating circumstances," the sheriff allowed, albeit reluctantly. "But he's still killed, and he's still a shady fucker. Not things I want to see in my kid's … partner."

"At least he's not boring," Stiles muttered mulishly. "Plus, he'll probably never, ever be anything even remotely like my partner, which is at least in part thanks to this completely horrifying talk. I think my libido just died, dad."

"I wish I were so lucky." John ruffled Stiles' hair. "Stiles, when Peter told us about the Council, he didn't do it to get some sympathy or extra bodyguards for himself. He's worried about you."

"That doesn't mean he has the hots for me," Stiles protested, even if the thought was appealing, in a scary sort of way. "He's worried because I'm human and therefore breakable, which is actually nice. Scott never was all that concerned with anyone's safety."

"Do you really think Hale wouldn't just say so if that were all?" The sheriff grimaced. "I really don't want to encourage you, or worse, him, but with Scott's adjudication approaching, we need to keep things very clean. Hale's already been in the tabloids for hanging out with underage teenagers, even if the press has backpedalled since Jackson's father sent them a strongly worded letter. That stuff stays with people, unfortunately."

"Okay, I get that," Stiles agreed, still out of sorts about the sudden left turn the night had taken. "No shenanigans for the Stiles as long as Scott is a problem."

"No underage shenanigans with Peter," his father clarified and smiled crookedly. "I'm not a complete monster."

Stiles raised his uncomfortably flushed face. "As if anyone my age is even interested in me. At the rate I'm not being flirted with, I'll return from college a virgin. So why don't we just finish this supremely embarrassing conversation and pretend it never happened?"

"Yes," the sheriff agreed promptly and rose from the bed. "I've said my piece and I know that you'll be responsible ... ish, at least. Sleep well, kid."

"Ha-ha, very funny," Stiles called after his father's retreating back.

The door to his room closed and Stiles rolled onto his back and starfished on it. Heat was rising from the skin of his face, neck, and hands. But far worse was the heat in his mind. Why did his dad have to tell him this? Why give his already overactive brain something like this to tear apart?!

Groaning, Stiles cursed his whole existence and then resigned himself to yet another all nighter, this time to contemplate his dad's words to death so he'd have some measure of peace going forward.

End of chapter 36